


A World so Dull

by SunshineFlower345



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Background Relationships, Character Study, Gen, Lorenz-centric, Minor Igraph, Minor Leonie/Byleth, Minor Lysithea/Maya, Politics, Post-Canon, Post-Golden Deer Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23549971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunshineFlower345/pseuds/SunshineFlower345
Summary: "Lorenz thought, even in the height of his teenage arrogance, he would have been appalled at the idea of being a king, of all things. After all, that had been the founding principle of the Alliance, a roundtable of nobles that heeded no king. The hypocrisy of the Alliance asking the Empire and Kingdom to bow to a new king was not lost on him."
Relationships: Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 5
Kudos: 27





	1. Prolouge

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this a long time ago when I first beat the game, but never posted it. Then I nearly lost all my writing when my computer decided to fail on me without warning. So now I'm going threw my old stories and getting them ready to post online, I hope you all enjoy it! :D

_ Lorenz had never been an assertive child, much preferring to fall in line behind his childhood friends rather than adding another voice to the fight that was who got to be the leaders when they played knights vs bandits. _

_ It always seemed to make Hilda happy when he fell in line behind her despite him being seven months older than her (and when you are seven or eight, a month meant so much more than it did once you hit your teens), and eventually the other kids would have to listen to her as she’d lead them over the bushes and into the fields of Derdriu where they absolutely shouldn’t have been. _

_ It was Lorenz’s father that first condemned their actions. Count Gloucester was not mad about the breaking out of the city walls and potentially letting the group of younger kids walk out into danger. No, his father was livid with him because he hadn’t been leading the excursions. _

_ Lorenz remembered his father yelling about how the Gloucester family was meant to be the leaders of the Alliance in the era to come, Lorenz taking a knee to ‘that Goneril girl’ was absolutely obscene. It was the duty of their family to lead in all things. _

_ Lorenz, even at the age of eight, knew that crying was not suited to someone in his position, so it didn’t come as a surprise when he couldn’t keep the tears down that his father sighed and turned to leave the room, telling him to think on what his actions meant. _

_ He wasn’t sure how long he’d spent on his bed trying desperately to stop the hot tears from blurring his vision. The creek of the bed and a soft silk on his cheek were what alerted him to someone else having walked into his room. _

_ Through the blur of the tears he’d been able to make out his mother’s soft smiling face. And at that, Lorenz lost all pretense of trying to stop the tears as he clung to his mother’s blouse and she rubbed his back. _

_ “Cry all you need to Dear. I know how harsh your father can be,” She cooed in his ear. “He only wants what is best for you in the long run, you’ll grow to understand that.” Lorenz had slowly calmed his breathing in time to his mother rubbing his back, though he still felt a hiccup every now and then. “What your father doesn’t understand is that it takes so much more maturity to follow a leader than it does to lead. You’re far ahead of the curve to understand that, Dear.” _

_ “I, I don’t though” Lorenz tried to ask and his mother shook her head. _

_ “A leader is only as strong as the strongest follower they have, when you bend a knee to someone else, you are ensuring the strength of your side. You know your father wouldn’t be able to properly care for our territory without the help of our retainers and his advisers. Just as they will help you when your time comes as well,” She shifted Lorenz so that they could look each other in the eyes. _

_ “And never forget, one of the best qualities a leader can have is not wanting to rule, it means they understand such things and won’t abuse the position they’re in.” _

_ “But, Father wants to rule doesn’t he?” Lorenz quietly asked and watched as his mother’s eyes fluttered closed and an expression he didn’t understand settled on her brow. _

_ “You’re better off not questioning such things Dear,” She muttered and hugged him tight. “I just know that you’ll be one of the best counts Gloucester territory has ever seen, so long as you remember to respect those who work under you.” _

_ And because his mother had told him not to, he didn’t question it again. He hardly questioned anything after that, not that he should be the one to lead the Alliance one day, not that he was markedly different from the commoners because of his noble birth, not that Hilda had lost all interest in leading around the same time he’d gained his, and especially not that Duke Riegan had died in Gloucester territory under mysterious circumstances. _

_ It would be years and years later that anyone forced him to start questioning things again, and that came mostly from his class and teacher at the Officer’s Academy. When he did start questioning everything at the guidance of Professor Byleth, he’d realized he’d been nothing but a puppet for his father since he’d been born. _

  
  


**Day 9 of the Horsebow Moon, Imperial year 1186**

**Goneril Territory**

**Midnight**

Lorenz sighed as he forced himself to walk lighter, so his heeled boots did not click so loudly in the empty halls of the Goneril Manor. If he was being honest with himself, he still felt like he was in shock from the battle with Nemesis. He still hadn’t been able to rid his mind of the puppet that had wielded the dark Thyrsus.

There was no real reason to assume he’d even looked anything like the historic Gloucester, he’d been a puppet after all. But the image of him crumpling under Lorenz’s magic was not an image that was going to leave him, likely ever. All Lorenz could do was try to forget it and act like the war was finally over, since it was.

_ For real this time! _ Claude had taken to saying.

He was sure that had been Hilda’s goal in dragging everyone to her home and forcing them to celebrate the founding of a country Claude was in the middle of disbanding to consolidate power. But Lorenz was glad for the excuse to spend more time with everyone, and the food of the Leicester Founding Festival had always been a favorite of his.

He turned out to one of the many balconies, if nothing else, being outside would help with how loudly his footsteps echoed off the walls. He took a deep breath of the nighttime air, not cool enough to be truly refreshing. He needed to pull himself together, even Raphael had asked him if he was okay during the celebration earlier.

It had only been a puppet. It didn’t even matter if it had looked like his ancestor.

Even if it had been his ancestor, Lysithea had been loudly talking about how the ten elites had lived so long ago they were no more related to any of them than any other random person. And they weren’t real, just puppets, she’d added when Marianne, Hilda, Claude and Lorenz had all simply stared at her instead of replying.

Lorenz really should have checked on her. She must have been just as shaken as the rest of them. He’d been too caught up in his own head.

“Hey there, couldn’t sleep?” A voice called from above Lorenz, and he nearly fired at it. He might have if Thyrsus had been on his person. But when he looked up all he found was Claude sitting on the roof above the leftmost wing of the Goneril Manor.

“Claude!” Lorenz snapped. “You scared the life out of me!”

“Sorry,” Claude smiled. The type he’d first used when coming to the monastery as a teenager, a fake one. Lorenz didn’t understand why he was trying to act like he hadn’t been just as shaken by the fight with Nemesis as the rest of the group, but he didn’t call Claude on it. “Just thought it would be weirder to not say anything.”

Claude seemed content to ignore Lorenz after that exchange and while normally Lorenz would have found that to be a blessing, he didn’t want to be alone at that moment, or Gloucester’s face might start appearing behind his eyelids again.

Lorenz let out a sigh before gripping the storm drains along the edge of the roof and pulling himself up. It had taken more effort than mounting a horse, clearly, but he’d managed it well enough. He huffed before scooting over to where Claude was sitting.

“Show off…” Claude muttered in lieu of any kind of joke; he really must have been in a bad mood.

“And how did you get up here then?” Lorenz tried to lift the mood a bit. It seemed to work as Claude’s smile loosened a little before he pointed behind them at a window which looked like it went to the attic.

“Ah,” Lorenz spoke again, he’d forgotten that Claude wasn’t good at climbing. It was so out of line with the image of a goofy slacker that Claude worked so hard on, it was an easy thing to forget. And perhaps that’s what Claude wanted. “What are you thinking about?” Lorenz asked after a beat.

Claude shifted next to him. Lorenz noticed that he had Failnaught at his side. Claude’s face was scowling in Lorenz’s general direction, in a deep thought, at least he’d finally dropped his fake smile.

“I was actually thinking about you, Lorenz,” He finally replied.

“Were you? What about?” Lorenz asked and pulled his knees to his chest.

Claude’s face had been neutral, not betraying his emotions, but even that seemed to be too much for the man because he started smiling that pained smile again. “About your beady eyes.”

“My what?” Lorenz turned to him annoyed but desperate for this kind of back and forth they’d had in their school years.

“Yeah, your eyes look like beads of Amethyst. They look like they glow in low light,” Claude said, smile faltering again.

Lorenz sighed and put his hand over Claude’s free hand. “Just as yours glitter when you think you’ve dodged a question,” He spoke smoothly, if this was the game Claude wanted to play Lorenz wasn’t going to back down.

Claude turned his head away to look at his family’s relic. “I really was. Thinking about you, though.”

“I believe you,” Lorenz assured him.

“It’s just like, you, you feel like home to me,” Claude was suddenly speaking with an urgency Lorenz didn’t understand, but he squeezed at Claude’s hand in the hope it would calm him down. It didn’t. “You and the others! There’s nowhere else in the world that’s made me feel so safe! I loved the time we got to spend living in the monastery again! Even with the war happening,” He gasped for air after he’d stopped in what Lorenz assumed was the middle of a sentence.

“Is this about the coronation Claude?” Lorenz asked. It made sense that he would be having second thoughts about becoming what he’d just defeated. Even if he’d been the one insisting that Fódlan needed a king to hold it together.

Claude slowed his breaths and fell back onto the slanted roof, removing his hand from Lorenz’s in the process. “Yeah I guess it is, now that you mention it.”

Lorenz looked him over as he picked up Failnaught and readied it to fire at the moon, it’s magic glowing bright in the night sky. The magic arrow shattered into red glitter before it got too far, and Claude dropped his arms back down on the roof, and the bow in the process.

“Be careful with that, it only has so many uses you know,” Lorenz scolded him before looking at the moon, he wondered if there was any significance to shooting the moon in Claude’s convoluted mind.

“If you’re so worried about it, you can have it,” Claude spoke. Lorenz hadn’t been looking so he nearly assumed he’d miss heard.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Lorenz raised his voice. “It is your family relic, it’s no use to anyone if it’s not in the hands of the Riegan heir-”

“Exactly,” Claude spoke again, voice dark. “The person who wields Failnaught is the Riegan heir, heir to the Alliance, and by extension the throne of Fódlan. I want you to have it.”

“I,” Lorenz felt his throat go dry. “I cannot accept that.”

Then something unexpected happened. Claude started laughing, not fake, but entirely unpleasant all the same. Lorenz thought he’d sounded like Hubert, clinging to his last threads of life, cackling like he hated the world.

“What then?!” Claude yelled. “All the talk about being there to unseat me was what? A lie? Just to make me feel unwelcome?”

“What?! No!” Lorenz yelled back, trying not to be deterred by Claude’s voice, despite the fact Lorenz had never heard him shout before. “When I spoke those words, I thought you were unfit to lead! I told you as much that I don’t think that anymore!” Lorenz hadn’t admitted it, but he’d been happy that he wouldn’t have to lead when they’d discussed Claude taking the throne of a unified Fódlan. It felt like one more spite to his father, that he’d be content in an advising role.

“I’m running away Lorenz!” Claude was screaming. Lorenz wondered if those who had gone to sleep on the other end of the building could hear them. “How much more unworthy do I have to be!?”

Lorenz took a breath to yell back at him, but he didn’t have the words and he let the air out through his nose. He and Claude sat there listening to the whistling of the bugs in the summer night air.

“There’s nothing I can do to make you stay?” Lorenz asked, barely above a whisper. He had a few things he could try but he wasn’t sure if they’d just make everything worse.

“… If you truly don’t want to lead, give Failnaught to Ferdinand,” Claude chose to say in place of a reply.

“I’m fond of you,” Lorenz spoke. It was perhaps the worst way to confess, as little more than a plea to stop Claude from something he’d clearly set his mind to. But he needed to know the reply, and so he lifted his head to look Claude in the eyes.

Claude looked at him with wide eyes painted on his otherwise angry face, likely frozen from the shock. Lorenz kept watching Claude’s face as the other moved to put the bow down on top of where Lorenz hadn’t moved his hand since Claude let it go.

“Then, take the bow, and let me leave. Please,” Claude spoke, pleading. “I don’t want to go. Not now. Not so soon, but, I can’t-” He cut himself off.

“Where are you going to go?” Lorenz spoke as he moved his hand to cover the grip of the bow.

“… Home,” Claude eventually replied. Now it was Lorenz’s turn to channel Hubert’s ghost as he bitterly laughed.

“What do you gain from these secrets Claude?” He asked, trying to control his voice, but sure he was failing.

“I- They keep me safe,” Claude said, like a petulant three year old.

Lorenz bit the bottom of his lip in thought.

“… Me too,” Claude said. “I’m fond of you too Lorenz. That’s why it has to be you.”

Lorenz wasn’t sure how he should have felt, surely a confession was supposed to make one feel happy, but confessions weren’t supposed to be fueled by anger either. Lorenz just sighed and tried to ignore the fact he felt like his heart had been ripped out.

“If you want to leave, then go. I won’t stop you,” Lorenz said. Something flashed in Claude’s eyes, making Lorenz wonder if maybe he really had wanted Lorenz to keep begging him to stay. “But, I will alert Hilda and the Professor, and they will certainly try.”

And at that Claude stood up on the roof as Lorenz remained seated. In the moonlight and wind, he’d looked nearly ethereal. Like the spirit of a dying noble house that had been born out of a need for a leader, and now that the war was over, he needed to return to the Fae.

Lorenz snapped out of his metaphor when he saw tears running down Claude’s face in the moonlight.

“I meant it Lorenz. You felt like home to me,” Claude said, voice oddly clear of crying.

“And you were my north star,” Lorenz replied. “I’m going to go get Hilda now,” He threatened.

“We’ll meet again,” Claude finally sounded like he was crying, with his voice hitching.

“We’d better,” Lorenz tried to ignore his own tears pooling.

Claude sighed and turned around to walk to the edge of the roof and whistled for his wyvern. “… You could ask me to stay, once more,” He said after the dragon found the two of them. It nuzzled at Claude’s hand, having read the mood.

“You’d resent me,” Lorenz said.

“Yeah I probably would,” Claude agreed. After he’d mounted his wyvern, he turned back to Lorenz to look him in the eyes one last time. “We will meet again.”

“You already said that,” Lorenz found the last thing he’d said to Claude was a bitter jab as any other thought died in his mouth. He watched as Claude bid his dragon companion east.

To Almyra, Lorenz knew.

And then he found himself alone on Hilda’s roof with a weapon that demanded a different crest burning a hole in his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to anyone who clicked on this story for the shipping, but this is Claude's only onscreen appearance. However the relationship is an important threw line for the rest of the story! I hope you'll continue to read ^_^


	2. Red Wolf

**Day 5 of the Red Wolf Moon, Imperial year 1186**

**Old Riegan Manor**

**Daytime**

Lorenz thought, even in the height of his teenage arrogance, he would have been appalled at the idea of being a king, of all things. After all, that had been the founding principle of the Alliance, a roundtable of nobles that  _ heeded no king _ . The hypocrisy of the Alliance asking the Empire and Kingdom to bow to a new king was not lost on him.

And really, what right did he have to call himself a king when he knew the only reason the old imperial and kingdom nobles followed him was because Ferdinand and Felix did. The three of them had ended up being the ones to keep their little experiment of a government in one, fragile piece.

Felix, followed by Sylvian and Ingrid, had taken up the rebuilding efforts of the government, as the kingdom had taken by far the worst of the fighting in the war. Felix would sometimes complain that Lorenz couldn’t get them more money, but he always seemed to understand the position Lorenz was in.

Ferdinand had been in charge of a new sort of experiment, building a system by which everyone in Fódlan would be able to receive the same kind of education they’d received at Garig Mach. Ferdinand had confided In Lorenz about the plan that he’d made before he’d defected to the alliance. Lorenz was the only one who knew that the plan had originally been meant to support Edelgard’s meritocracy.

And Lorenz had taken on the job of keeping the nobles in line and getting the taxes necessary to fund the reconstruction and new school system their government had desired to make. He understood the importance of making all the lords interact with him. He was the face of the new government, but the only point any of them seemed to agree on was that they shouldn’t have to give money for things that would benefit other lords. 

“Lorenz~” Leonie hummed out his name as she rocked on her feet beside the desk he’d been working at. “You’ve got to get ready to meet with the new lord from Ordelia,” She informed him, like he hadn’t been the one to give her that information not three hours ago.

“Yes, I suppose I do,” Lorenz muttered and shifted the notes on his desk. Samuel von Ordelia, Lorenz thought to himself. The cause of all their current problems.

It was just over six months since the defeat of Nemesis that had marked the start of Fódlan’s new dawn.

Six months even since a certain someone ran off into the night with just an outline of his political dreams and that damned bow as a goodbye.

Just under six months, Goddess it had only been six months, since Lorenz had taken up the throne for a new Fódlan, already once abdicated despite no one truly having claimed it yet.

But most importantly, it had been five months since the Ordelia family announced their plans to renounce their claims to the territory.

It had started as an attempt to keep the peace, and to that end it had worked. No war had broken out, no neighboring land had tried to annex Ordelia, yet anyway. Lorenz sent a small prayer to any and every god he knew it stay that way.

No, what happened in the Ordelia was simply forward progress.

Lysithea’s parents had wanted to ensure the stability of the area when they left and so they followed the historical example of the Aier family. They held an election for the role of noble in the territory, as well as their spot at the roundtable. And the man who won was none other than Lysithea’s distant uncle.

Not two weeks after having been officially recognized by the government and blessed by the church, did the man turn around and tell the world that actually, he hadn’t wanted the position of lord forever. And he swore to hold another election in three years time, with the only requirements to run being that the person lived in Ordelia territory and would swear to do the same as him and hold another election in another three years.

Of course that upset every single noble, no matter where they were from originally. It was a jab at the institution of nobility as a whole. Samuel von Ordelia had never said as much, but Lorenz was almost certain he’d supported Edelgard in her bid for Fódlan.

Lorenz gathered his papers and made a gesture for Leonie to follow him, which she did with a hum. The sound might have been annoying to Lorenz when they were students, it might have even irked him when they were soldiers fighting against imperial invaders, but lately he’d been so isolated from the people he called friends that almost anything about them was endearing.

Lorenz shook his head as they made their way through the building that was once the Riegan Manor but now acted as the head offices for the new government of Fódlan. He felt a lot like the house, pretending to be something that was needed, over what he truly was.

Once they’d made it to the main conference room, truly the dining hall Lorenz and Hilda used to play hide and seek in while their parents dealt with the politics, Lorenz noticed that the only person in the room was a young maid he did not recognize.

“Greetings, are you with the party from Ordelia?” He called out to the girl who nervously bowed.

“Um, that’s- I mean! Yes! We’re from Ordelia!” She stuttered. Lorenz felt his shoulders fall at the same time Leonie patted his back and took the lead in the conversation.

“That’s great! We’re glad you made your trip alright!” Leonie tried to calm the maid down long enough to figure out where the new lord was.

Lorenz noticed the door to a certain hallway wide open at the same time the maid finally found the courage to say that She’d really tried to stop Lord Ordelia from wandering off, she promised. Lorenz was storming off down the hallway without so much as checking if his retainer had followed him or not.

He felt Leonie fall into lockstep with him before he saw her. in his peripheries Lorenz could see her hand resting on the hilt of her sword. The sword she’d taken to using after becoming his retainer, as she had to give up lances due to the confined spaces Lorenz spent his days in.

_ Lorenz had asked her once, a few nights after it had been made official, if she’d regretted becoming his retainer over Byleth. She’d looked him up and down and said that he needed her more than Byleth ever would. Lorenz hummed to himself and said that she should ask Byleth if that was how she felt about the matter. Leonie flushed. _

_ “We’re both idiots then, aren’t we?” Lorenz had asked her that night, she only replied by passing him a bottle of wine. _

_ “You got a confession at least.” _

_ “I confessed.” Lorenz joked and was suddenly glad he was the one holding the wine bottle. _

“The door’s open,” Leonie spoke when they reached the room. “How did he even know where it was?”

Lorenz didn’t reply as he stormed into the room he hadn’t entered since the government had moved into the building. Even then he’d only gone in long enough to figure out who it belonged to. After realizing it was Claude’s old room, Lorenz had ordered the whole wing sealed, and supposedly no one had entered since.

The place was covered in a thick layer of dust and Lorenz threw his hand over his mouth as he walked in. It was the same mess of weapons and polish scattered on the floor with books and inkwells on the unmade bed that he remembered. But it was disturbed, Lorenz could swear he could see the footprints in the dust, made by the very man they’d been chasing.

Samuel von Ordelia stood in the middle of the room, shaking the dust off one of the books that had been on Claude’s bed. He stood as tall Lorenz, perhaps even taller, and his hair had the exact same crimson shade that Lysithea’s father held, that Lysithea held at one point.

“Tch, of course he wrote notes in ciphers,” The man spoke and threw the book back down haphazardly, definitely not the way Claude had left the book. “Tell me boy, do you respect your father?” Samuel hadn’t bothered turning around until after he’d addressed his audience.

Lorenz frowned. “Explain yourself.”

“You heard me. Do you respect your father like a good little noble brat? Or do you hate him and want him dead like the other power hungry sycophants?”

Leonie drew her sword, trying not to wobble with the different center of gravity. “Don’t speak that way to your king.” Lorenz found it funny sometimes, how quickly  _ “you’re no better than the rest of us Lorenz!” _ Leonie had fallen into the role of his retainer.

Samuel laughed, “I’ll not heel to a bunch of teenagers playing dress up.”

Lorenz bit his tongue to stop himself from replying that they were 26, sure that such a response would only prove the man’s point.

“You never answered my question, what is your opinion of your father? Of your father’s politics?” Samuel pushed. “The normal assumption is that the child agrees with their parents unless otherwise said, and you’ve scarcely acknowledged your father politically at all.”

“My father and I do not agree on most things, but your attempts to undermine the nobility are where we come closest to agreeing,” Lorenz replied. That had to be what the man was here for, to ask the new government to endorse his model of a new noble every three years.

Before he knew what was happening, he was being shoved up to the wall. In the corner of his vision, he could see Leonie’s blade resting against Samuel’s throat. “You don’t get it do you kid? The tactics that you’ve been honing all your life as a secondary lord? They’re useless to you now, you cannot remain silent as a king. When so many people listen to your word, neutrality is the same as an endorsement for the worst side,” Samuel spoke. “If you’ve torn up all of the old governments just to make them again exactly the same, then by all means, keep letting your father speak for you like the puppet you are. But if you want to make the world a better place you’ll have to learn to listen to the common folk.”

“Hey! I’m a ‘common folk’ and I say get off him!” Leonie yelled, dropping her sword to take a punch at the man. He staggered back, laughing.

“I can see you kids think you’re doing the right thing, enduring positions you don’t want to be in,” He spoke to both of them now. “But it’s just a mockery to the people you claim to serve. Only those who truly want to lead are going to do a good job at it.”

“Next word out of you that’s not ‘I’m’ or ‘Leaving’ and this is going through your heart,” Leonie said as she picked up her sword again.

“Fine, I’m leaving. But don’t expect pity when this game of pretend ends with all you kids’ heads in the guillotine.” Samuel gave them a flippant wave as he turned his back to the two of them, seeming confident neither Lorenz nor Leonie could hurt him. “Oh one last thing?” He said and turned around.

Lorenz forced himself out of the stupor having been accused of being his father’s puppet had put him in. “Your advice is not needed or welcome.”

“Yeah, Yeah,” Samuel waved him off. “It was way too easy to knock you kids off your kilter. This room is nothing but a festering wound, you should pack it up.”

He closed the door, leaving Lorenz and Leonie standing in the dust, in silence. Something snapped in Lorenz.

He’d moved to the bed and started gathering the books Claude had left in every which way into a pile.

Back then, after the war, Claude only had a night or two at most in this room. But he’d already managed to make this kind of mess, Lorenz thought to himself as he closed a book that had been left open with its spine up.

“Lorenz,” Leonie sighed. “Don’t let him get to you.”

“This isn’t what Claude would have wanted us to do with his room, and we both know it,” Lorenz replied before looking down at the book he had in his hand. Claude had written something on the cover.

_ My promise to Raphael _

Lorenz sighed as he opened the book to try and figure out what it was about. The book was a history of the formation of the Adresdian court systems. A thick tome Lorenz would have expected to sit alone in the library at Garig Mach, as it was the kind of book one looked at, not tried to read.

But it occurred to Lorenz, maybe this was what he needed. There was no single court system for Fódlan yet. There hadn’t even been a single court system in the Alliance, where the enforcement of the laws changed depending on the territory. Maybe because that’s what he’d grown up with Lorenz had assumed that they didn’t need a unified court system.

But clearly, Claude hadn’t gotten that memo. And just as Samuel had muttered when they’d walked in on him, all the notes on the inside were written in a cipher, looking like gibberish without the key.

“The key…” Lorenz muttered as he turned back to the front cover. Claude’s promise to Raphael. “This is it.”

Claude to Raphael.

It couldn’t be that easy. And yet.

Leonie had moved to help pack things away but had gotten stuck when she’d found a half finished game of chess on his desk. She picked up the Black Queen piece.

“Even after all this time apart, it still feels like we’re just pieces on his chess board,” She said and put the piece down where she’d found it.

“It does. But I’ll take that over being my father’s puppet any day,” Lorenz said and gathered every book with a title pertaining to the court systems on Claude’s bed.

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think you were ever your father’s puppet,” Leonie tried to comfort him. Lorenz snorted despite himself.

“Leonie, it is unbecoming to lie to your king’s face,” He said. She laughed with him and gave him a small nudge with her elbow.

“Geez sorry, I was just trying to say what you wanted to hear.”

“Don’t start with that, I’m going to need your frankness if I’m not going to lose myself to this position.”

**Day 5 of the Red Wolf Moon, Imperial year 1186**

**Old Riegan Manor**

**Nighttime**

The cipher had been that easy, Lorenz found when he went back to his room. It was a simple swap cipher with C = R. Claude to Raphael. it had almost made Lorenz wonder what the point of a code so easily broken was.

But those thoughts brought him back to Hilda’s rooftop and  _ “They keep me safe.” _ And Lorenz really needed to get work done that night. The notes in the book had been about blending the many Alliance courts into a branch for the imperial court, and how that court would blend it’s laws with the laws of the Faerghus courts.

It was ingenious, honestly. It frustrated Lorenz that Claude had left them for nebulous reasons when it was clear he’d have done a better job of the past six months than Lorenz had.

But even in these plans for the future scribbled in the corners of law books, it was clear he’d intended for Lorenz to be the leader. The notes did not mince words about who the first high profile victim of the unified court system would be. And it was going to have so much more impact with Lorenz as the king over Claude.

“Lorenz,” Leonie’s voice was right next to his ear and he jumped back startled.

“What!?”

“You didn’t reply the first three times I called you,” Leonie pouted. “And you didn’t come to dinner. And then, you ignored the maid who brought it to you. They sent me to wake you from this trance.”

Lorenz rubbed his eyes and looked beyond the books he’d been studying all day. There was a plate of soup and bread, no doubt it had gone cold hours ago.

“Ah, I see. I will apologize to them later,” Lorenz promised her.

“And I wanted to say. I’m headed to the Monastery for the month,” Leonie looked to the ground and Lorenz thought back to Samuel’s words enduring positions they didn’t want. “If you have letters you want to send to Fhirdiad or Enbarr, they will get there much faster if I send them from the Monastery.”

“That is prudent. And yes, I do have to contact Ferdinand and Felix and most likely Countess Varley as well. When are you leaving?” He asked.

“Tomorrow morning,” Leonie replied. Lorenz didn’t comment, he didn’t have the right to get in the way of Leonie going to the person she actually wanted to be with.

“I will start writing them now then,” Lorenz replied. “Leonie?”

“yeah?”

“You are going to confess this time, are you not?” Lorenz asked her and laughed when she flushed and stuttered out about how she could never admit such feelings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If any place names are misspelled, I assure you it's the fault of Fire Emblem itself. XD Anyway thanks for reading!


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